Earlier this week, I said that former president and current terrorist Donald Trump should receive the same treatment as the leader of the terrorist Oath Keepers. That is, he should be held in jail without bail, unable to rally his supporters until he's faced trial. Not only that, but it would be good for the country to see an ex-president face justice and treated like other alleged criminals are. Let me list the ways:
1. It would prove to a fickle public that the Justice Department and law enforcement are absolutely serious about this shit. Right now, with very little actual news coming from the DOJ or the January 6 committee in the House, and with this investigation taking so very much longer than it ought to have, the attitude on the right is that all of that shit is just one more thing they'll eliminate should Republicans win one or both houses of Congress. The narrative conservative media and politicians are creating about the Trump investigations is one of boredom, bias, vengeance, and incompetence. I know that doesn't matter should indictment come from any of it, but it sure as fuck is damaging the public image among the majority of the nation that doesn't anally-probe every tweet or statement from Liz Cheney or Letitia James.
2. I'm not worried that arresting Trump on suspicion of seditious conspiracy will make his armed lunatics go apeshit. In fact, I think quite the opposite for most of them (there will always be a stray lunatic). It would make a whole lot of people fucking realize that they better back the fuck down and/or give up what they know. The delay tactics by potential witnesses is working, forcing the 1/6 committee to postpone public hearings for at least a month, from April to May. If all of a sudden real consequences were in the mix, those who participated in or helped plan the insurrection would be shitting themselves in fear, wondering, "If law enforcement is willing to arrest a former president, what the fuck else might they do to me?" Democrats don't understand the power of fear in the same way Republicans do. So while there are totally legitimate reasons to lock up Trump, the intimidation factor would be a huge benefit to the investigations. I'd bet that at least one Trumpling turns on dear ol' grabby, abusive dad.
3. While bewilderingly roaming free, Trump keeps having rallies and putting out statements that profess support for the 1/6 rioters and promise they will not be punished for crimes that some of them have confessed to. He refuses to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election fairly, which has kept a not-insignificant portion of the population enraged and ready for action, action that Trump has already stated he wants if he's indicted federally or in New York or Georgia. Trump has done nothing to disabuse the armed fucknuts of the notion that he is telling them to lock and load and go on his command. He is unwilling to turn down the heat in the country, preferring to piss gasoline wherever he can. Shutting Trump the fuck up would leave all the troop-rallying to his surrogates, none of whom have a scintilla of the deranged orange juice that Trump brings.
4. Republicans are normalizing the attack on the Capitol. This goes hand-in-hand with the first point. The more distance we get from January 6 without visible progress beyond arresting the ground troops for the coup, the more it will seem like No Big Deal, and that's what the GOP wants more than anything. It's why so many of them can say shit like it was "legitimate political discourse." The GOP has taken the side of the insurrectionists, which means they will welcome this fuckery when it happens again. Whatever shreds of a mask of democracy remained on the face of the Republican Party have fallen off. They got a taste of tyranny, and they fucking liked it. You put Trump in jail and you change the whole conversation and throw off the whole plan. And I guarantee that some Republicans will be fucking relieved.
5. Everything we keep learning points to a conspiracy to steal the election by Trump and the Trumpinistas, including preparing for the possibility before recounts or anything could happen. They tossed around things like sending the military to seize voting machines. They organized the attempt to get the fake rosters of electors accepted. This is on top of trying to get the Attorney General to sign off on the lie of election fraud and the obvious crime of pushing the Georgia Secretary of State to "find" just enough votes to put Trump on top there. A jailed Trump would give a frame to hang all of this on and make it easier to comprehend.
Look, I'm not a fucking idiot nor a childish naif. I'm in an area of speculation, if not outright fantasy, that this would actually happen. But I'll stand by the idea that Trump should have been arrested on January 6 or even earlier. To me, it's absurd that he hasn't been.
Because, sure, we can say that arresting a former president would never happen. Except if we're a country that really does want to live up to the ideas of our founding, as so many people on all sides of the political spectrum like to pretend, then no person is above the law. Arresting Trump would prove we are, occasionally, who we say we are.
